On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and as part of the Muséo / Sciences event, organized by the Association des conservateurs des musées des Hauts-de-France, le LAAC stages the exposition COSMOS, Silence, on tourne !

In 1968, the equipage of Apollo 8 mission takes the first Earthrise photography from outer space showing the Earth rising. The same year, the film 2001 : A SpaceOdysseyby Stanley Kubrick is shown in the movie theaters. In 1971, the 3,5 inch thick aluminum sculpture entitled Fallen Astronautby Paul van Hoeydonck is placed on the moon by NASA during the Apollo 15 mission. Eleven vintage replicas has been preserved on Earth, and one is in the collection of the French museum LAAC. The replica of Fallen Astronaut is the starting point of the exhibition. Is it a deep desire of evasion, ecstasy or a fascination for the conquest which pushes artists to developped visionary artistics representations playing with the vertigo concept of the void, perpetual motions of the stars, light, technology and the robotization generalized on the universal scale, the alienation of the man, science-fiction … ?

COSMOS, silence, on tourne !asks the question of immemorial time, original or futur, instantaneous and eternal. This theme confronts, zooms in on or melts the infinitely small atome and the immeasurable immensity. A theme that also hightlights sensitive reality and visionary conception, scientific foresight and fantasy. Scientific reflextions on space-time thus allows a renewal of the history of origins, provoking an unprecedented dynamic of forms, a modern spirituality and new cosmogonies.

The itinerary of the exhibition, proposed by Matthieu Senhadji and Sophie Warlop, guides you in an infinite artistic cosmos according to subjective and oriented points of view. Artists have immersed themselves in the exploration of space to offer multiple interpretations. Meteorites, comets, interstellar clouds, magnetism, gravitation but also human intervention in space provide poetic astonishmentin the midst of scientific facts. The word space even manages to create a link between science, art and cosmos.

For this exhibition, the gallery lends three works by the American artist Mark Tobey, Space Life, 1968 ; World, 1960, Sans titre, 1961 and a work by the Japanese artist Susumu Shingu, Moon Boat, 2009.